


The Young Loves, the True Loves (That Come From the Sea)

by objectlesson



Category: Kacey Musgraves - Fandom, Lana Del Rey (Musician)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Christmas, Christmas Music, Dancing, Drinking, F/F, Gothic, Hair Brushing, Human/Vampire Relationship, It sounds like horror but its not, Mystery, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance, Secret Identity, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Wine, it's mostly just very festive and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21907909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: It’s 1967. Two days before Christmas, Kacey’s car spins out on a rural Tennessee  road during a storm and won’t start. Desperate for help, she goes door to door seeking shelter,  but the only person who answers is the mysterious, beautiful widow Del Rey.A gothic romance, complete with erotic hair brushing,veryred wine, painted portraits hidden in spooky attics, floor length silk robes, a nativity scene missing its baby Jesus, and Phil Specter’s Christmas album.
Relationships: Lana Del Rey/Kacey Musgraves
Comments: 12
Kudos: 37





	The Young Loves, the True Loves (That Come From the Sea)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh this was soooo much fun to write!! I was inspired after seeing those delicious pictures of Lana and Kacey together in a fancy bedroom wearing fancy robes in Kacey's Christmas Special. They just looked so cute and sexy and 60s? So I threw on Christmas classics and brainstormed with Chloe, who is very into vampires, and this whole plot just came together so easily. It's not at all horror, just one of those gothic romances/ghost stories, sort of, where there's a heroine running around with a candelabra and a rain soaked nightie? 
> 
> Anyway apparently this is the first Kacey/Lana fic posted on ao3?! Which makes sense I guess, I certainly hadn't thought of them together until I saw them sing I'll Be Home for Christmas and my life was changedddd. I recommend listening to Phil Specter's Christmas album while you read!!! Happy Holidayssss I love you all.

—-

It is a dark and stormy night. 

Kacey sits on her hastily packed suitcase, trying her hardest to compress it together enough to get the snaps shut, but everything is shoved in so haphazardly she’s losing the battle, and more importantly, her arms always get weak when she cries. 

Her eyes are bleary as she sniffles, rolling off the suitcase to lie across her childhood bed beside it, staring at the ceiling and trying to take deep breaths to calm herself down. She dabs at her eyes with her fingers, and they come back trembling, wet and black with mascara. For a few seconds, Kacey holds her breath. Thunder rumbles distantly outside, rain drums relentlessly against her bedroom window. And then, in a soft din under it all, Bing Crosby croons miserably about how he’ll be home for Christmas on the turntable downstairs. 

And that just makes her cry _harder._

 _“_ It’s not fair,” she whispers quietly to herself, hating how she sounds all of sixteen, despite having had her thirty-first birthday this past summer. That’s the whole _problem_ , apparently, why she’s fighting with her parents, why she’s packing her bags to drive back to her lonely studio apartment in New York instead of staying home for the holidays. Because leaving Tennessee for the city to try and make it big as a country singer instead of finding a nice local boy to settle down with was _fine_ when she was twenty something, and her folks could convince themselves it was a phase. But at thirty-one? That was grounds for a blow out fight. And Kacey didn't want to _hear_ it, not two days before Christmas, not from her _Christian_ mom and dad who preached tolerance, and kindness, and _family_ above everything else. Not when she’d _never_ be marrying a man and making them happy, and couldn’t tell them the honest truth why. 

There’s a soft rap at her door, and she sits bolt upright in bed, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her dress. “What?” she snaps, pretending she hasn’t been crying up here for the last hour while she packs, secretly hoping her mom comes up to apologize. 

“It’s me,” a voice says, thin and exhausted. It’s Kelly, her little sister, who announced her engagement to the perfect man this morning over breakfast. He’s a shop-owner in town, a business man with a business degree, a _supposedly_ handsome (Kacey can never tell) church -goer with enough money and land, but not _so_ much it raised any eyebrows . Their parents were _overjoyed._ And it’s not Kelly’s _fault_ she sparked the whole thing, but whether or not she meant to call attention to Kacey’s age and marital status (or lack therof) she _did,_ so Kacey’s stomach twists up defensively, cheeks getting hot. “Will you let me in to talk?” she asks. 

“Fine,” Kacey says, striding across the room and throwing the door open. “Say what you’re gonna say, but nothing’ll change my mind. M’leaving tonight.” 

“I’m not _here_ to change your mind about leaving,” Kelly says testily from the doorway, crossing her arms, narrowing her eyes. “I think it’s better if you _do._ Mom’s crying down there, while she cooks. You break her _heart_ Kacey, do you hear me? Why can’t you—for _Christmas,_ at least—just try? _Try_ to be normal?” 

Kacey makes an outraged sound, her tears drying up to be replaced rapidly with blind heat. She _resents_ that normal only has one definition in her childhood home, that normal means following a single, narrow path. The path of her mother, the path of her sister. The path of every other Musgraves’ woman before her, like toy soldiers in a line. “Why can’t _they_ try, for Christmas? Why is it on me?” 

“Because!” Kelly cries, eyes wide, lips shiny and pulled tight across her teeth as she bares them. “Because _you’re_ the one who’s different! Mom just asked an innocent question and _you_ were the one who had to make a big deal about it and cause a scene! You _always_ have to be different, and _progressive,_ with your big-city ideas. Why can’t you just be agreeable for _one week?”_ she hisses, trying to keep her voice down so their parents can’t hear, even as her eyes well up. Kacey’s heart aches to see the wet building shine, because she doesn’t _want_ her sister to hurt, over all this. It’s her own business, her life in New York, her decision to not marry…that doesn’t have to do with Kelly at all. It shouldn’t, anyway. “Why can’t you just be _happy_ for me?” is the last thing she spits out, eyes flint-dark and very nearly spilling over. 

Kacey reels back, heart pounding. “I _am_ happy for you, Kelly,” she murmurs, throat tight, stinging. “It’s just a pity y’all think that being happy for you means I gotta want the same thing as you. Or means I gotta pretend to be something m’not.” 

She turns on her heel and stops back into her room, slapping her forearm down _so_ hard on her suitcase it closes enough she can click the fastenings into place. Kacey stands with her heavy black hair whipping over her shoulder as she pants at the effort, heart in her throat. 

“So that’s it,” Kelly murmurs darkly. “You’re really leaving _two_ _days_ before Christmas because mom’n’dad are worried you’re gonna die alone.” 

“No,” Kacey says, shrugging on her camel-hair coat, tugging her cowboy boots on one by one and refusing to look up. “M’leaving two days before Christmas because I don’t _belong_ here. And y’all made it clear you don’t want me.” 

“ _Kacey,”_ Kelly says, but it sounds far away, underwater. Like they’re shouting at one another across a snow-storm. The blood thunders in Kacey’s ears, so loud it’s hard to hear anything else, and her hands shake as she grabs her suitcase, hauls it up onto her hip, and shoulders her way past her sister with hair trailing behind her in a curtain. 

“Merry Christmas,” she spits out. The words are barbed against her tongue all the way down the stairs and through the living room (past her parents who won’t even _look at her),_ and out into the storm as the screen door slams noisily behind her, squeaking on its hinges. It’s not until she’s standing in the rain looking down at her bleary reflection in the windshield that the bitterness of it fades. She’s doing the right thing, she thinks. The right thing for _her_ , anyway.

The rain feels like a baptismal on her cheeks, even as it stings. Her hair and her jacket are wet as she collapses behind the wheel, cold against fever-hot skin. Kacey fires up the engine, wishing that parts of her weren’t still pathetically hoping her dad will rush out the front door and chase her down and _beg_ her not to drive in this weather. He never comes, though, so she hits the gas and swerves out of the driveway, gravel crunching under the wheels of her hand-me-down Chrysler Plymouth Fury. 

It’s not until she’s a few miles away from the warmth of her old home that she starts to cry again. 

—-

Maybe there’s a sign, somewhere hidden in the brushy darkness framing the road. Something that says _hazard,_ or _detour,_ something Kacey _misses_ because she’s too busy wiping her eyes at the wheel, squinting through tears to peer through a rain-streaked windshield. She never sees the warning if there is one, and before she can even _process_ the ply-wood road obstruction draped in weak reflective tape, she’s slamming on the breaks and spinning out onto the shoulder. 

When the car finally stops, Kacey’s tears have stopped too, along with her heart, and her breath. She sits there in the driver’s side for a long time, gasping, arms stiff and elbows locked as she holds the wheel as if at arms distance while the rain pounds down on her Fury’s dented hood. Finally, _finally,_ as her breathing slows to a manageable rate, she unsticks her stiff fingers, flexes them, and tries the gas. 

It doesn’t work. Her tires spin and her car groans, too old and beat to shit to do much else. Kacey groans then, too, collapsing to press her forehead against the wheel in defeat. She _can’t_ go back home, especially after making it _only_ few miles short of the interstate. It’s humiliating. She needs to either learn how to fix a car, stat, or _find_ someone in the general vicinity who knows how to fix a car, so she’s not forced to go _crawling_ back to her bigot parent’s house. Kacey swallows thickly, grits her teeth, and opens the door. This is the only way, she decides. She’s got to put a little faith into southern hospitality and knock on the doors of the nearest houses, hope she looks more pitiful than she looks threatening, and ask to use their phone for a tow service. _It’s fine_ she tells herself, teeth chattering as she tightens her jacket around her shoulders at the same time the wind tries desperately to rip the thing open. _Just use your Nashville Charm._

Two no-shows later, Kacey is _freezing,_ and soaked through. Her cowboy boots squish with rain water as she trips down the slick porch stairs of the second house to ignore her knocking, and as she follows the long, winding dirt road down to the next, she tries _hard_ to quell the thunder of her heart. The first two were just farmhouses. Humble, unimposing things belonging to the faceless small-town neighbors of her parents. But this house? She _remembers_ it from her childhood, and maybe that's why she’s avoided it this whole time, waiting until she got desperate enough to brave the muddy driveway. 

Back when she was ten or eleven, Kacey and her friends called this the ‘witch house.’ They thought a witch lived there, the mysterious widow Del Rey, who had two husbands die back to back before inheriting the estate. It’s a huge plantation style house set back from the road, and even now as Kacey approaches it, her stomach gathers peculiarly in a nostalgic sort of apprehension, eyes fixed on the once-white porch pillars mud spattered in the darkness. Even when Kacey was a _child,_ no one had seen the widow Del Rey in years. They used to play games, here, trying to draw her out. They’d throw pebbles and twigs at her window before they ran away shrieking, Ding Dong Ditch, with flaming paper bags of dog-shit left upon the stoop. Never once did she linger long enough to catch a glimpse of the widow, but the picture she invented in her head haunted her dreams, her sleep-over tall-tales. Every witch-story Kacey told at her slumber parties lived in a hulking southern mansion with kudzu choked windows and a long, paved dirt drive-way. And all of her witches were widows who killed their husbands for his money, now alone in the haunted hallways, secret and silent and terrifying. 

Now that growing up has made her kinder, Kacey feels terrible. The widow Del Rey is probably just some lonely old woman who had to clean burning shit off her porch once upon a time because the neighborhood children were so cruel and wild. _I’ll apologize, if she still lives here,_ Kacey thinks, tightening her soaked coat around her body, shivering in her drenched-through linen dress. She wrings her hair out on the porch, which seems smaller now that she’s older, the paint chipped and fading, floorboards scuffed and very nearly sagging with age. There's a brass knocker on the door but no bell, so she curls her freezing, half-numb fingers around the shape of it and knocks as best she can, trembling all over. _Please, Mrs. Del Rey_ she thinks, chewing her lip. _Be here._ Anything _to save me from having to go back._

Just when she’s about to leave, dripping and defeated, someone’s foot-steps pad over through the foyer and like magic, the door creaks open. “Oh goodness,” a soft, musical voice says from the shadows. “Poor thing. Must be freezing.” 

The door widens and a flickering candle reveals ayoung woman with dark, hooded eyes. A girl, even. Perhaps not a woman. Kacey can’t tell because her voice is choked in her throat, teeth rattling, knees pressed together so they don’t quake too obviously. The woman at the door must not be the widow because she’s no older than _Kacey_ , chocolate brown hair up in the same beehive style, skin smooth and pale white. She’s wearing a short teddy, black glittering fabric glinting in the candle-light. Kacey tries not to stare, but it’s _hard._ Her legs are long and shapely, her mouth in a perpetual pout and her eyes—they’re _sad._ Kacey feels like she could get lost in them, and it seems _absurd_ she ever ran away from this house. “I’m—I’m sorry,” she murmurs, tightening her jacket across her chest as the woman’s gaze falls lazily to her rain-soaked dress, brow pinching in concern. “It’s just—my car broke down outside and m’trying to find a _phone_ and if you could be ever so kind to—”

“Sweetheart,” the woman sighs, tilting her head to expose the pale, elegant line of her throat. “Please. Come in. You’re gonna catch a cold.” 

Kacey stumbles in past the threshold, still caught off guard, still dizzy. Her dress is clinging to her like a second skin and her nipples are bullet hard, and it’s only occurring to her _now_ how terribly exposed she would have felt if any of her parents neighbors would have answered the door, invited her in. Those men and their rifles, their flat-beds, eyes that crawled up Kacey’s legs before she even hit puberty, when she was still telling witch-stories and throwing rocks. She’s so _grateful,_ in this moment, for a woman like her answering the door and inviting her in, saving her from one thousand less savory fates. “The power’s out,” the woman says, fluttering dark lashes against her cheek. “M’sorry. There’s a wood-stove, though. And I can run you a hot bath.” 

“I—please,” Kacey murmurs, heart clenching up in that strange, shameful way it does every time a beautiful woman reads her mind and gives her the exact thing she wants most in her heart of hearts. She tries not to feel guilty, this time. She deserves some warmth tonight. She deserves to be welcomed after her one family denied her. “That would be amazing.” 

The woman takes her jacket and then steers her inside by her shoulders, manicured nails digging comfortingly into her bare, rain-wet shoulder as she directs her upstairs. Shadows and light play against the mahogany detail of the staircase and Kacey is forced to remember ghost stories, campfire screams the the endless black of the Tennessee scrub-brush extending for miles in every direction. “M’sorry it’s so cold,” the woman murmurs, gaze flicking back to land on Kacey, hold her there upon the stairs like a firefly caught in a jar. “It’s a big house, hard to heat well.” 

“Oh—yes. I imagine so,” Kacey murmurs, thinking about the crisp, white, imposing shape the Del Rey mansion makes against the surrounding sprawl of flat brown. “I suppose then—that it’s good, the widow doesn't live here all alone. Nice she has folks like you to heat the house for her. Keep her safe.” 

The woman’s eyes get even sadder, though the corner of her plump mouth quirks up into a faint smile. “Yes. It is good.” 

Kacey follows her through an expansive hallway, feeling strange and dazed to be in this place she so violently _feared_ for her entire childhood. Now that she’s here, she can’t exactly remember what she imagined behind these walls, what sort of cobweb-festooned darkness, but it seems so _silly_ now, so far away. It’s a beautiful home, really. Clean, ornately decorated, immaculately glamorous. She shivers, idly thinking that this is how things go in horror stories. The devil masking himself in irresistibly desirable glamour to draw in hapless victims, appearing as a helpless child, a hungry beggar…a beautiful woman with soft hair and softer lips. Kacey shakes her head, deciding she doesn’t _care_ how horror stories go anymore, it’s not fair to tell them about women just because they are strange, or mysterious. Not every strange woman is a witch. She would know. She would know. “I’m so sorry, but I’m—I’m dripping all over. Making puddles,” she admits, gathering the sopping hem of her dress in her hands. 

“That’s alright, we’ll clean up once you’re warm,” the woman says lightly, cupping her pale palm around the flame of her candle to protect it. 

“Mrs. Del Rey won’t mind?” Kacey asks, nearly slipping, wondering if the old woman wanders the halls or if she’s bedridden, sitting beside some huge window in a tower watching the rain. 

The woman turns around to look at her, eyes sparkling and unreadable. “No, she doesn’t mind.” 

Kacey somehow feels as if she’s said something wrong, something offensive. Maybe the widow passed recently. Or maybe she’s gravely ill. She wonders as she chews her lip, hair a cold, heavy mass against her neck, making her tremble. “Here,” the woman says eventually, ushering her into a tiled bathroom with a huge, claw foot tub in its center. The decor is delightfully old fashioned, and Kacey watches with wide eye as the woman extends a sectioned screen with embroidered roses on it. “Go ahead and change behind here, honey. I’ll get your bath going. You must be so cold, we don't want you getting sick…that storm out there…she’s a big one.” 

“She sure is,” Kacey agrees, stepping behind the screen and self-consciously peeling off her clothes. She’s soaked all the way down to her bra and underwear, which she hangs over the top of the screen first, so she can lay her dress atop them, hiding them, distantly and perhaps foolishly ashamed of how worn out they are. Money has been to tight since she moved to New York, and it’s not like she ever—it’s not like anyone but _her_ ever sees her undergarments, these days. Or ever. 

Steam is billowing from the tap, and the woman is rifling through a medicine cabinet above the sink, humming _Silent Night_ distantly, dreamily. “That smells amazing,” Kacey says through her chattering teeth, suddenly _very_ aware that she’s _naked_ behind this screen without a towel, skin pebbled with gooseflesh, mascara running down her face in tarry rivulets. “It is—some sort of bath salt?” 

“Mmhm, with herbs and spice from the garden,” the woman says. “Rosemary, lemon, a cinnamon stick. We’ll get you steeping like a sweet teabag, miss. It’ll help your joints. Help warm you up.”

Her silhouette approaches, soft-edged on the other side of screen like Kacey is gazing at her through tissue paper. She replaces Kacey’s wet clothes with a plush, maroon towel, tossing it over the top. “Bath’s ready for you. Let me know if it’s too warm.” 

“I like my baths hot,” Kacey tells her, shivering as she tests the water with her toe. The rosemary and lemon slices are swirling in it loosely, and the warmth feels _so_ damned good she forgets all about the urgency of finding a phone, her car stuck off the shoulder, the fact there’s a strange woman standing there watching her as she unwraps the towel and slides into the tub, groaning. Everything seemingly melts away, even the sound of the rain beating against the window more peaceful than it’s felt in hours. “God, it’s perfect.” 

The woman lets out a long breath, smiling. There’s something so _soft_ about her, like she’s made from clouds, cream, ambrosia salad. She sits on a filigree stool beside the bath, and the motion of it is like a long sigh. The candle almost snuffs out and leaves them in darkness, but it recovers in the last moment, and flickers back to lift. “Oh, I’m so happy to hear that. Do you mind if I warm my hands in the water? They’re frozen.” 

“Oh! Please, go ahead,” Kacey murmurs, sinking down deeper into the water, letting her long black hair spread out and cover her breasts to they’re not exposed to this woman, to whom she does not want to seem indecent or shameless. At the same time, she’s so _comfortable_ around her, feels so inexplicably, overwhelmingly cared for. If only her _actual family_ at her _actual home_ made her feel as welcome as the widow Del Rey’s _maid._ She feels her throat tighten again, her eyes prickling with unshed tears as the women leans closer, and submerges her elegant hands into the water beside her, plunging them deep enough Kacey’s hair swims around her wrists. “Thank you so, so much,” Kacey tells her, wiping her eyes. “I’ve had a really terrible day, actually, and you’ve been so kind and welcoming and—just. Thank you.” 

“It’s my pleasure, honey,” she says sweetly, dark eyes twinkling from behind darker lashes as she idly splashes in Kacey’s bathwater. There's a lingering moment of quiet, nothing but the sounds of hot water licking against the side of the tub, against Kacey’s body. “You have beautiful hair,” the woman says eventually, withdrawing her hands from the water and drying them carefully on Kacey’s towel. 

“I— _I do?”_ Kacey asks, cheeks suddenly hot, voice coming out in a defensive sputter. She never knows what to _do_ when other women compliment her, with the way it makes her insides squirm in embarrassing longing. “It’s a mess right now. All rain and hairspray and— _brambles,_ probably, with the way the wind was blowing out there.” 

The woman laughs, and curls her wet fingers around the silver base of her candle-stick again. The wax has melted very low, collecting in a series of slender drips down the tarnished handle. “I’ll brush is for you when you’re done with your bath,” she says easily standing. “I’ll be back, sweetheart. I need to get more candles. And I’ll bring you back something to change into, that sound good?” 

It sounds like heaven, really, and Kacey feels like she might start to cry again, this time in gratitude, overwhelm. “Sounds great. Thank you so, _so_ much, really.” 

“I told you,” she murmurs, twirling a finger through the loose dark hair tumbling over her pale shoulders. “It’s really my pleasure.” And then she’s gone, floating out of the halo of candle light and into the darkness. 

—-

When the woman comes back, she does not knock first, so Kacey jumps to cover herself, arms tight around her breasts and her heart racing. “Sorry, Honey,” she says softly, smiling that dreamy smile as she holds up a silk robe. It’s the floor-length and beautiful, dyed to look like a dusky tangle of roses and wild green vines, with the sleeves and bottom hem lined in white feathers. Kacey has never in her _life_ worn something so fine, and she almost feels criminal shouldering it on after the woman politely holds it up after she dries herself off. “Are you feeling warmer?” she asks. 

“Yes, thank you, _so_ much warmer. Thawed like a turkey dinner,” she jokes awkwardly, pulling the wet mass of her hair up out of the robe and into a twist on her head so it doesn’t soak the robe, mat the beautiful feathers down. 

“Come to my room,” the woman says gently as she replaces the melted down candle nub with a fresh taper. She uses her licked fingers to put it out with a hiss, and something about that makes Kacey’s insides twist up urgently. “I’ll brush your hair out for you. Braid it, if you like.” 

“You don't have to do that,” Kacey says, turning away because she’s blushing, she can _feel_ the heat creeping up her cheeks the way it always does when she’s invited to partake in the rituals of _girlhood._ She’s never been good at those sorts of things. She was a skinned-knee kid, a tomboy with a tangled bob; she wore overalls and told ghost stories and biked around the neighborhood with a pack of boys and farmer’s daughters. She sneezes at hair brushing and braiding, but only because it was the sort of mysterious thing she felt was unattainable. Once she realized she wanted to be a singer, she painstakingly taught herself how to pluck her brows, straighten the thick, inky mess of her hair, apply lip-stick and smile while she plays her guitar. She knows how to play the game, at least, but when she’s with other women, there’s the constant pervasive terror she’s _doing it wrong_ resting on her shoulders, reminding her that there’s something unspeakable about the way she is, the way she _wants._

 _“_ Of course I don’t have to,” the woman says, elegant fingers curling around the base of her candle-stick, and the stem of a wine-glass Kacey only just noticed she came back with. “But I’d like to.” 

And then she sways out the bathroom door, and all Kacey can do is pad after her in her bare feet, robe flowing behind her like a sail. 

The woman’s room is a grand thing. High ceilings and a four poster bed, the walls painted a strange, soothing blue green that makes Kacey feel as if she’s in a fish-bowl, bobbing gently, safe from the rest of the world. “My goodness, if this is _your_ room, I can only imagine how big and fancy Mrs. Del Rey’s is,” she says, and she’s worried it comes out rude, so she quickly adds, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—- it’s beautiful. I just.. Mrs. Del Rey must be a very generous employer if the staff’s bedrooms are so lovely.” 

The woman sets the candle-stick down, smiles coyly from where she’s leaning against her ornate mahogany vanity, and sips her wine. When she swallows, her plump lips are stained dark. “Mrs. Del Rey doesn’t live with staff. She lives alone,” she says then, eyes twinkling. 

For a strange, split second, Kacey doesn’t understand. She feels like she’s talking to a ghost, like the apparitions she invented in her childhood hunted her down and found her, taking the form of the thing she fears most: beautiful girls offering to touch her, the threats soft skin and the smell of sage. But then, it dawns on her. “You—“ she starts, somehow too stunned to say it. It doesn't make _sense,_ this woman is so beautiful, and so young, but…she _does_ seem so very sad, too. 

“I’m Ms. Del Rey,” the woman says, abstract shapes dancing on her cheeks as a draft makes the candle flame dance. “But you can call me Lana. I never got your name, either, want to tell me or is it a secret?” 

“Oh I’m _so_ sorry! I’ve been so rude and I just didn’t realize—“ 

“It’s fine,” Ms. Del rey— _Lana—_ murmurs, shaking her head and sipping her wine, lips dark like a bruise. “I can keep calling you pet names, if you’d like.” 

“Kacey,” she blurts, toying with the dripping ends of her hair. “It’s Kacey.” 

“Kacey. A sweet, pretty name,” Lana says, pushing herself off of the vanity and sweeping a abalone handle hairbrush off the of it in a single fluid motion. “Now let me help you out with that hair, Kacey. Before you get tangles.” 

There’s a shuddering flame, the shadows playing along the walls, and then, like a miracle, there’s Lana’s gentle touch pushing through Kacey’s hair like an exhalation, fingers smooth and careful as they feel her out. “Gosh. That does feel good,” Kacey murmurs. 

“Did your mom ever brush your hair, when you were a little girl?” Lana asks, laying the damp towel from the bath down onto her own lap and easing Kacey backwards towards her. Kacey doesn’t even resist, she just _melts_ into the touch, lashes fluttering in bliss. Being touched, being _cared_ for…they feel so good right now, so good she doesn’t even let the usual tide of anxiety about other women surge over her. She just relaxes. “Mine did. She’ d brush it for hours while I sat between her knees and I’d fall asleep sometimes it was so peaceful. It’s been years since she passed, but sometimes …I still feel like I’ll be forever chasing that special sort of peace, you know. Between my mother’s knees.” Her fingers are very cold at the back of Kacey’s neck, but somehow, it’s still so soothing. 

“My mom—-we used to be close, when I was a kid. I guess not playing by the rules is cute up until a certain point,” Kacey murmurs, shivering as Lana drags the brush down the length of her hair, over and over again, until her whole scalp is tingling. “She didn’t really _brush it,_ more like she wrestled with it to get the tangles out. I’d cry.” 

“Well, I won’t make you cry, sweetheart,” Lana purrs, kneading one icy hand into the roots of Kacey’s hair, finger-combing the ends with the other, playing her as if she were a violin. “I’ll just keep you warm. Until the storm stops.” 

Kacey closes her eyes, and lets herself drift out to sea. 

—-

The rain is relentless, and the power does not come back on. Kacey’s long black hair is shiny and smooth, though, prettier than she’s seen it in months, especially after all the snow in New York this November made it dry and brittle. She keeps swishing it around her shoulders as Lana leads her down the main stairway to the kitchen, loving the soft shift against her skin. Lana’s teddy glitters in the candle-light, wine so dark in the glass it almost looks black. “You must be hungty, but I’m afraid I don’t have much food,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. 

“Oh, that’s fine. I’m a southern girl, I can make a meal from just about anything if you don't mind me lookin’ round your kitchen.” 

“I don’t mind,” Lana says, sitting down onto a stool and swiveling. “No one’s cooked here for awhile…my kitchen is probably lonely. She’ll be glad someone is paying attention to her again.” 

Kacey tries all the cupboards, most of which are empty and draped in cobwebs, or full of dusty dishes. The only thing Lana seems to have in mass are unlabeled bottles of red wine, and jars of spices and dried herbs presumably from her garden, . However, Kacey manages to find a single onion growing long green stalks, some shriveled but salvageable potatoes, flour, and a jar of lard. “I can make biscuits and home fries,” she announces, grinning as she arranges the ingredients in a line on the brick and island topped with a weathered cutting board. “Breakfast for dinner.” 

“Perfect. Used to be my favorite,” Lana says, pointing to a drawer to the left of the stainless steel sink with her long, elegant finger. “Knives are in there. Baking pans are in the oven, pots hanging over the stove.” 

Kacey gathers all she’ll need, noticing the fine patina of dust and oil coating everything she touches. She wonders what Lana eats, if she goes out every night in a fancy dress, somewhere with caviar and champagne. if there’s some man in town trying his damnedest to woo her, and she’s just reaping the benefits as long as he’s persuing. “Well, what’s your favorite now?” she asks, hauling down a Dutch oven for boiling potatoes. 

“Wine,” Lana says, smiling sadly, dark lashes fluttering like black moths against the moonlight of her cheeks. 

“You know, I could use some of that tonight,” Kacey announces, throwing open the cupboard packed with those slender, tall, unlabeled bottles. She grabs one, grins at Lana. “I hardly ever drink, can’t afford it. But hell. If you don’t mind.” 

Lana laughs, slides off of her stool and sways over to Kacey to take the bottle. “Of course I don’t mind, honey. You deserve it. But here, lemme get you the good stuff,” she says, peering into a different cupboard and taking out some sherry instead, switching the bottles out. “Since we’re celebrating.” She uncorks it and pours Kacey a glass, eyes twinkling over the crystalline rim Ias she hands it off. Their fingers brush, and Kacey has to look away. Lana is the exact sort of woman she used to stare at as a little girl and wonder _how, how do they make it look so easy? how are they so shiny, so soft, so glorious?_ She’s never quite shaken her urge to stare, though now, she wonders such different things. _would her lips be soft against mine? What does her hair smell like? What would it be like? God, what’s wrong with me?_

 _“_ What are we celebrating?” Kacey asks, taking a burning sip of her wine. It goes straight to her head, and she’s instantly dizzy, tongue tingling with spice and sweet. 

“New friends,” Lana says, clinking their glasses together. “I don’t get many visitors and it’s—well. It’s a big house, you saw. Cold nights get lonely.” 

Kacey bravely reaches out and squeezes Lana’s wrist, heart leaping into her throat at the contact. Her skin is so cool, so soft. “I just came straight from a crowded house, my mom and Dad and sister and her fiancé all bustling around cooking and caroling and lemme tell you—I was _so much_ lonelier there. This is—this is really nice, Lana Del Rey. Thank you for having me.” 

Lana smiles a watery smile, the black of her eyes shining like the night sky, like a whole Milky Way full of stars. 

Kacey’s hands shake as she mixes the dough, and she keeps accidentally dragging the feather cuffs of her robe through the flour until Lana comes up behind her and sweetly, carefully rolls up the sleeves. “There you go. You can get in there up to your elbows now,” she offers, and Kacey’s stomach flutters, her cheeks heating up and Lana leans against the counter and watches, pale cheek pressed to the side of her wine glass. “So where are you from, Kacey? Tell me your story.” 

“Not much to tell,” Kacey mumbles, kneading some salt and dried herbs into the dough for flavor. “I’m not—I don’t really have a _story_ yet. I grew up in the neighborhood, left for the city when I was nineteen, trying to make it big as a singer and well…that that was almost ten years ago,” she says, sighing deep, chest tight with the familiar bite of failure, the reminder she’s not much better off than she was when she first left, just older, more tired. “I play gigs here and there, write songs for other folks mostly. Certainly haven't made it big, so I have a day job working as a waitress in Manhattan.” 

Lana looks up from her wine, eyes wide. “Manhattan? I grew up in New York! We traded places,” she giggles. “What a tragedy. Otherwise we could have been friends before then.”

“Oh my word! Where in New York?!” Kacey asks. “I rent the tiniest, shittiest apartment in the village.” 

“I’m from Coney Island,” Lana says slyly, smiling like a cat. “I lived on the Ferris wheel. _God,_ I miss the city though. Miss the window displays at Macy’s during the holidays.” 

“They’re the best,” Kacey agrees, spooning the batter into a baking dish, already feeling a little drunk, robe fanning out from her knees as she spins towards her wineglass. “This year they had a _whole_ reindeer made out of Christmas lights. He was beautiful. You want to peel potatoes for me?” she asks, forgetting for the briefest moment that Lana is the Widow Del Rey, rich and mysterious and probably miles above peeling potatoes. She fees stupid as soon as it leaves her mouth, like she’s just said something terribly insulting. 

But before Kacey can apologize, Lana steps in, holding her hands out. “Put me to work,” she murmurs, and licks her lips with a wine-stained tongue. 

And Kacey’s heart rockets up into her throat again, choking her. She wonders when every second of this will stop feeling surprising, or if she’s just in for a series of drops and shocks, like the roller coaster at Coney Island. 

—-

Cooking heats up the kitchen. Kacey stops shivering, downs another glass while she fries up the potatoes and onions together, and her vision swims every time she throws her head back to laugh. Lana is actually quite funny, even if the way she talks is oddly stilted, tied up in ribbon so Kacey feels like she has to untie and pull back layers of wrapping to _truly_ understand everything she means to say. Still, she has so many _stories._ About getting lost in Brooklyn, about the time she saw a woman with six cats in a stroller on the Subway. It’s so strange and lovely, to share her experiences of New York with someone else, instead of stuffing them all down because the fact she doesn’t live in Tennessee anymore upsets her family. 

Lana is laughing so much, too. Her laugh is a low, lovely, bubbling thing, coming up from her stomach and spilling out of her sticky and sweet, like caramel. Candle wax melts onto the cutting board, but she doesn’t seem to mind, she just keeps lighting new tapers and using the base of them to snuff the old one, squish the wax down into the holder until it cools enough to stiffen and keep it in place. Lana crosses and uncrosses her legs, the neck of her teddy gaping enough Kacey can see straight into it, if she looks. She’s trying very hard not to look, even if she keeps wondering how she’s never seen Lana _shiver,_ even when the house was still frigid and the oven hadn’t taken the bite of the chill off, yet. There is something effortlessly glamorous about her, even in these less than glamours circumstances, and Kacey cannot help the way that sparks a low-burning _longing_ in the pit of her stomach. 

Once the biscuits are baked, they decide to eat in the kitchen, since it’s the only sufficiently warmed room in the house. “Those smell divine,” Lana said airily, rubbing her palms together. “You really _did_ make a whole meal from the dredges of my kitchen. You must be a witch.” 

“I just love to cook,” Kacey says, shrugging, using spatula to gently detach the biscuits from the waxed baking sheet. They’re golden brown and crisp around the edges, and she _is_ pretty proud of herself.

“A cooking witch, then,” Lana says, smiling. 

Kacey spoons a generous helping of potatoes onto two plates and one biscuit each to start with, well aware she’s capable of eating, (and probably will eat) more than that, but not wanting to be rude. 

Lana politely takes the plate. “Thank you, honey. This is the nicest dinner I've had in a long time.” 

They eat together to the sound of the rain, and Kacey cannot look away. Lana picks at things like a bird, tears her biscuit into hundreds of small, crumbly bits, which she dips into her red wine so that they are dark and entirely sodden before she pops them into her mouth delicately. Somehow it looks _elegant,_ like this is the way biscuits are supposed to be eaten, and Kacey’s not sure how that’s possible, but it’s how she feels. She watches Lana lick the crumbs clinging to her fingers, shoveling potatoes into her mouth all the while, stunned by the way the candle-light plays over her pale face, the rhythmic flex of her jaw as she chews. Kacey realizes, in this moment, that she _truly_ cannot gauge Lana’s age just by looking at her. There’s something timeless about her refined profile, her dark, heavy lashes. She could be a very mature thirty, or an extremely youthful fifty. Kacey doesn’t _know,_ can’t _tell,_ because she simply cannot reconcile the person she’s met tonight with the mysterious widow of her childhood. Furthermore, money changes how people age, how they _live,_ how they die. And perhaps every strange thing about Lana Del Rey can simply be chalked up to wealth. 

“How young were you, when you married your first husband?” Kacey blurts, the words spilling out of her before she even _realizes_ she’s not just thinking them, but saying them out loud. “If you don’t, um. Mind me asking,” she tacks on at the end, cheeks coloring as she stabs her fork into her potatoes anxiously. 

Lana laughs, swirls her wine around in her glass. “Oh I don't mind,” she murmurs. “I was half wondering when it would come up…the thing about living in the same small town for a long time is that people talk, and they write stories about you, and those stories live in the town just like _you_ do.” 

“I’m so _sorry,_ I just..I just remember, as a kid, knowing you were a widow and thinking you must be…” _old_ is the unspoken word between them. No matter how Kacey does the math or crunches the numbers, she can’t make sense of this woman in front of her, smooth skin, bright eyes, legs for miles. She wonders if she’s seeing her through some magical lens, if the storm is making her imagine things. If she died and when she spin off the road, and every moment since then has been a dream on her way to heaven. Or perhaps heaven itself. 

Lana tears off a bite of biscuit and slowly, carefully soaks it in her wine. “I think the word widow always makes people picture an old woman. When I first married Mr. Grant I was…gosh. I can’t remember, now, but I was terribly young. Younger than I was now. I’ve not been young for a very long time,” she sighs then, holding up the biscuit bit so it drips a few times before she puts it into her mouth. 

Kacey watches, mesmerized. Lana still hasn’t answered anything. None of this makes sense. _You can’t be much older than me, though, and that doesn’t make sense! You’re so glamorous, so beautiful, so…timeless. Like a photograph, arrested in time._ Before she can think of a polite way to ask, thunder crashes so loudly they both jump. Kacey spills her half-glass of sherry all over her borrowed robe, and the color of it spreads sark like blood into the ivory silk. “Oh goodness! I’m so sorry, I—you’re beautiful robe,” she exclaims, standing, gaze frantically sweeping the kitchen for a towel. 

But Lana is faster than her. From nowhere she materializes a kerchief, and in moment she’s gotten it damp at the sink and swept over again, gently dabbing the wet end on the stain. “Shh, it’s alright, honey,” she murmurs. “This old thing’s seen worse.” 

“You’ve been so kind to me, and I’ve just come and dirtied up your kitchen and ruined your clothes and asked you personal questions and—”

“Kacey, this is the most fun I've had in _centuries_ ,” she says very firmly, eyes dark and glinting, smile soft, but not quite meeting them. “And I mean that.” The air is so suddenly so warm between them, even as Lana’s hands are cold enough Kacey can feel the chill through the thin material of the robe. Her heart starts to pound, and she wonders if Kacey can feel it, if the thunder is resounding through her ribcage like something palpable. Worst of all, she can’t do _anything_ but stare as Lana Del Rey’s wine-stained lips, just a whisper away from her own as they stand so close, Lana gently dabbing at the stain across her sternum, where her heart won’t stop racing. “You should stay the night,” Lana says then, voice nothing more than a murmur, barely audible over the crash of the rain pelting the windows. 

“I couldn’t,” Kacey breathes, licking her lips, trembling all over. “I—you’ve already given so much.” 

“But I haven't given you a phone yet, which is the one thing you asked for. And _listen_ to it outside, honey, you can’t drive in that. You can’t do anything in that. So, stay here, and in the morning, maybe the power will be back on and we can get you wherever you’re going. But tonight…please stay.” 

Kacey’s breath comes in and out in a shudder, the whole of her frozen in place under Lana’s handkerchief. “Alright, then,” she says. “Alright.” 

Lana’s face softens, and for a brilliant, terrifying, magical moment, Kacey thinks she’s going to roll up onto the balls of her feet and kiss her, and _god,_ she wants it, she wants it so badly. Lana would taste like wine and herbs and she would be so soft, and it wouldn’t matter that nothing about her made sense, because Kacey would know for sure she was in heaven. 

But she does not kiss her. She steps away, clutching her handkerchief, which is now wine dark too, like everything else. “You can sleep in my bad,” she murmurs. “It’s the best one in the house. I’ll take the guest bedroom…I can never get much sleep when there’s thunder, anyway.” 

_Or we can both fit in your bed,_ Kacey would say, in a world where she said the unspeakable things that race around inside her like flurries of snow. _It’s big enough, and I don’t mind. We can keep each other warm._

Instead, she just smiles, curls the soft, shiny, brushed ends of her hair around her index finger. “Thank you,” she says. 

—-

Lana turns down her bed for Kacey, silk sheets and down comforters and heaps of embroidered, tasseled pillows in a myriad of shapes. Kacey shivers as and crawls inside, but Lana gives her a hot water bottle to slip between the sheets to keep her warm. The weight of it is comforting over her feet, so she burrows them beneath it, chews her lips, and feels like a little girl, somehow, as Lana blows out a candle and murmurs, “Sleep well. honey,” before she floats out the door, footsteps eventually disappearing down the hallway and fading to nothingness. 

Kacey closes her eyes. She’s exhausted, but she feels like it’s going to be a long time before sleep finds her. So much has _happened_ tonight, and so quickly, she hasn’t even had time to properly sort through her feelings about it. There’s the sting of feeling like she had to leave her own family home during the holidays, the cruelty of Kelly’s accusations, the ache of loneliness and un-belonging still nipping at her heels like wolves. Plus, the storm is so _loud,_ thundering against the windows and making the house creak. Perhaps she's only imagining it, but she also keeps hearing a rhythmic thumping in the attic, like something alive rustling around, an animal, a ghost. Just as her eyes start to droop she’ll hear it and her eyes will fly open, heart racing in her chest, forcing her to recall the adrenaline of the car spinning out, the chill of the rain, the taste of wine…and Lana, amid it all, the eye of a storm. So calm and mysterious and unmovable, a snowcapped mountain top standing tall while fog and rain swirl and crash around her feet. Kacey’s lips curl into a reflexive smile in the darkness, turning her head and pressing her face into Lana’s silk-pillow case to inhale. 

It smells like rose perfume and the distant spice of woodsmoke and then…perhaps metallic under that. The hint of blood, or of tarnished silver, something precious left out to rust. Kacey finds it oddly comforting so she rolls over, burying herself in this other woman’s sheets, soothing herself to sleep by the memory of that abalone hairbrush sliding rhythmically through her hair, Lana’s long pale fingers curled around the carved shell like a memory. 

—-

When Kacey stirs awake, the world outside Lana’s window has frozen over in the night. It glows so white her eyes burn as she blinks the remnants of sleep away, stretching luxuriously amid heaps of silk and cotton. This bed is _so_ much bigger than the narrow twin mattress she’s been sleeping on her her childhood bedroom, and twice as soft as the secondhand queen at her apartment in Manhattan. It feels amazing to starfish across the whole thing and realize that even spread as wide as possible, she can’t reach its four posters. She eventually sits up, expecting frigid air outside the confines of her blankets, but it’s surprisingly warm. 

Her gaze blearily sweeps the room, only to land on a glowing electric heater Lana must have plugged in over the course of the night. Kacey’s heart leaps predictably at the sight, as the _knowledge_ that Lana crept in here while she slept, careful to step quietly and not wake her. It’s a comforting thought, and she allows it to warm her as she slides out of bed, touching down on cold floorboards and tightening Lana’ robe around her shoulders. 

She’s halfway down the main stairwell when she sees Lana letting herself in the front door, and the spectacle takes her breath away.

There’s snow clinging to her chocolate brown hair, which is done up into a towering beehive this morning, save for a single tendril which must have come down in the wind. It’s curling beside her pale cheek now, framing the tail of her eye, which is sharp and black with pristine winged liner. She’s wearing a calf length navy winter coat, made of wool or mohair or something else rich and warm, and the contrast against the dusky shade of her nylons has Kacey’s gaze traveling down, down, until— _oh. “_ You’ve got my suitcase! How did you—where did you—”

Lana spins on the heel of her boot, smiling up at Kacey, eyes half-lidded and knowing, like she was _expecting_ her to be there, waiting. “You’re up,” she says, gently batting snowflakes from her beehive with a gloved hand. “I hope you slept well.” 

“It was _marvelous,”_ Kacey says, trotting down the stairs to help Lana with her suitcase. “Your bed is ten times nicer than anything I’ve slept on in _years._ Thank you so much. I hope the guest room wasn’t too cold.” 

“It was fine,” Lana murmurs, brow furrowing slightly as they share the weight of the suitcase. “Let’s take this up the stairs. I bet you’re dying to wear some real clothes.” 

Kacey has actually been enjoying Lana’s fancy robe. Not _just_ the luxury of it, but the knowledge that it’s not _hers,_ it’s Lana’s. The luxury is borrowed which makes it feel even sweeter, dizzying as she tries on Lana’s elegance, allows herself to be consumed by it, feathers sticking to her skin like she’s transforming into a bird. Still, it’s less than practical, and as they head up the stairs she keeps tripping on the lowermost hem of it. “I can’t afford very nice clothes,” she admits. “It’s been a dream wearing something so pretty. But gosh, am I glad see my suitcase. How did you even _find_ it?” she asks, voice cracking, winded as they lug it together. 

They dump the suitcase onto the bed and Kacey flops down next to it, panting as Lana stands over her, unbuttoning her coat. She looks as effortlessly put together as ever, cheeks not even flushed from the cold or the hauling effort. It’s like she’s a painting, unaffected by the world around her, immortalized in oils. “I found your car keys in your jacket pocket. I had to shovel the driveway anyhow, so I went out and saw your car on the side of the road and thought I’d take your things in for you…I hope it wasn’t presumptuous,” Lana drawls, hanging up her jacket and neatly folding her gloves into a drawer. She’s wearing a short dress underneath, forest green velvet with a plunging neckline, even though it’s not even _noon_ yet. Kacey is grateful she’s still breathless from the stairs, because her inhalation comes in stilted and choked as she stares.

“No, it’s wonderful! How on earth did you have so much time to get things _done_ this morning? I’ve just been snoring up here, you could have come and gotten me for help,” she says, tearing her eyes away and unsnapping her suitcase to rifle through it for something clean to wear, trying and failing to imagine Lana shoveling snow _at all,_ let alone in that outfit. She and Kelly always loved to help their dad clear the driveway when they were kids; she remembers the the satisfaction of scraping it down to the pavement, the sound of metal against cement. Thinking of Kelly and her father makes her heart clench, now, so she forces the image of it out of her mind and decidedly replaces it with the absurdity of Lana and her velvet dress, her sky-high hair caked in snow. A strange and miraculous vision. 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I wake up at sunrise, can’t ever help it. So I went out and got some groceries for us. Good thing, too, because the snow’s coming down something awful out there again,” Lana explains, kicking off her boots and stepping into low black pumps with feather puffs on the toes instead. “Now, you know I’m not much of a cook but I think we’re stuck here until the snow stops, so I thought maybe—”

“I’d _love_ to cook for us” Kacey exclaims, heart racing at the thought of another few hours in this house with Lana, stolen away from the world, everything snow-muffled and magical. She doesn’t want this to _end._ She doesn't want to face Christmas cold and alone in her apartment in New York, and she doesn’t want to crawl back home with her tail between her legs, forced to apologize for something she isn’t sorry for. 

Here, she feels seen, and cared for. She feels safe, but she _knows_ she can only stay as long as it makes sense. _Let it snow!_ she thinks recklessly, pulling on the pair of red and pink flannel PJs she has matching with her sister. It feels bizarrely blasphemous to wear them without Kelly and before Christmas morning, even though no one but Lana is here to witness the small act of rebellion. She pulls the weight of her hair out of the collar and allows it to cascade around her shoulders, before finding her Phil Specter Christmas album under the piles of clothing. “You got a record player?” she asks. 

_—-_

The house is even more glorious by daylight. The snow is falling in such thick, furious flurries the light filtering in through the windows is crystalline white, spilling into the enormous windows through heavy drawn blinds. It makes the kitchen worlds brighter than is was the night prior, cheerier now that Lana’s dragged her turntable onto the counter and plugged it in so they can listen to music. 

Kacey cooks and Lana sings along to Darlene Love’s _White Christmas_ and they both drink cup after cup of black coffee until the French press is empty and Lana boils water to brew another batch, humming along in her low, soothing croon. “You have the prettiest voice,” Kacey says as she fries them up come corn-beef hash and eggs. “And how do you like your eggs?” 

“Runny,” Lana murmurs, handing off a steaming mug. “And thank you, sweetheart. Not as pretty as your voice, though.” 

“Maybe you should come to New York with me once this snow-storm is over,” Kacey offers, half joking. “We could start a girl-group…get those harmonies. M’not making it as a solo act, anyway.” 

She cracks two eggs into a buttered pan, and then, so suddenly, she’s getting thrown off balance as Lana’s body collides against her in a crushing hug. Her arms wind around her waist, and green velvet presses up against her skin and _oh,_ Lana is so solid and so soft all at once, her cheek placidly cool where it presses into her own flush. “You really are such a sweet thing,” she murmurs before she pulls away. “I don’t think you realize, really, how lonely it’s been here, for me. I’ve never been very good at keeping friends.” 

Kacy shivers as she pulls away, hastily turning off the burner before the egg yolks get too solid for Lana. “I can’t imagine why! You’re so nice, so generous…only think I can think if is that you’re pretty enough it scares people away,” she murmurs, blushing hard because it sounds _excessive,_ like a confession, like something spilled. She plates some hash and the eggs for Lana, winding her hair around her finger nervously how she always does when she’s not sure what to say. 

Lana laughs, pushing her stool to the island, looking so lovely and otherworldly as she sits down to eat in her velvet dress. “Perhaps,” she says. “Or maybe it’s that I can’t cook, I never have food in my kitchen, and the people here in Tennessee think I’m strange. Southern Hospitality never looked right on a New York girl like me,” she explains. 

Kacey sits down opposite of her, watching the peculiar way she eats, puncturing her eggs yolks and letting them spill across her plate, then picking out the bits of beef from the hash and drowning them in the sunny yellow before popping them delicately in her mouth. “I think you’re _plenty_ hospitable. Look at all you’ve done for me! Letting me sleep in your bed, brushing my hair, buying food for me to cook…and gosh, last night. If you hadn’t found me I would have frozen to death out there, or I would have had to go back home, and that’s the last thing I wanted to do. I’m so glad you took me in so I didn’t have to show my face again. I didn’t…if I’d gone back, my family would have won.” 

“Won what?” Lana asks, sipping her coffee. “What happened with your family? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if you do…well. M’a good listener, honey.” 

Kacey frowns at her plate, pushing the hash around with her fork. “We had a fight,” she admits. “My little sister, she’s getting engaged. And that’s fine, and all, and I love her, I’m proud of her. But every time another woman in my family gets married, my mom’s got to turn it into some big inquisition about why I’m _not_ married. Which turns into a whole list of other things I’ve not done right by them…leaving town, living in the city, pursuing music. They just—-they’re traditional, and I’m not, and I’ll never be enough for them.” 

“Oh, Kacey. I’m sure you're enough. I’m sure they just want the best for you,” Lana murmurs gently, reaching out across the island and laying a cool hand on Kacey’s forearm.

“They don’t. They want what’s gonna _look_ best for _them._ My happiness doesn’t actually matter, my Mom’s _said_ as much, plenty of times. She never asks, _Kacey, do you want to find a man and settle down?_ she says, _Kacey, people are gonna start wondering if you don’t find a man and settle down._ It’s not about me, it’s about people _wondering,”_ she explains, eyes prickling sudden and hot. She wipes them before the tears spill, shifting her gaze up to the vaulted ceiling to hide how quickly the tears welled up. “Oh gosh,” she mumbles, sniffling. “M’sorry. You probably think I’m complaining about a whole lot of nothing…and how _insensitive_ of me to talk this way about marriage, especially since you’ve lost two husbands. I didn’t mean to—”

“Honey,” Lana says, so quiet it’s almost a whisper. “Just because I’ve been married twice doesn’t mean I think that’s right for you. If you don’t want it you don’t want it. And your family should trust you on that. Hell, just because I’ve been married twice doesn’t mean I think it was right for _me_ either. It’s a terrible thing, really. The way us girls don’t get a say in who we belong to.”

“I just want to belong to myself,” Kacey says then, thumbing the wetness from under her lower lashes, stabbing her fork into her eggs. 

“That makes two of us,” Lana says, staring at her plate, dash lashes fluttering against her cheek. Snow swirls outside, a sudden gust of wind rattling the kitchen windows so loudly they both flinch. It’s only then that Kacey realizes Side A has finished up and they’re sitting in virtual silence, so she slides off of her stool to flip the record.

—-

After breakfast, Lana takes Kacey’s hands and pulls her to her feet, eyes dark and glittering conspiratorially. “Cheer up, buttercup,” she sing-songs. “How about we decorate the banquet hall? I think I have some tinsel and one of those silver trees up in the attic…I haven’t celebrated in years, haven’t had anyone to do it with, really. But you’ve got me in the spirit, and it’s Christmas eve.” 

Kacey’s heart leaps, her stomach twisting at how sweet the pressure of Lana’s grip feels, their hands tangled. “Me and Darlene Love, you mean.” 

Lana laughs, batting her lashes, tugging Kacey out of the kitchen and into the hall to the staircase. “Mostly you,” she promises, and then she’s off, spinning up the mahogany steps, hair coming down artfully from the beehive and tumbling down her back in loose ringlets as she moves like a ballerina on a music box. Kacey runs after her, gasping with laughter, chasing her through the house and past so many treasures. Peeling wallpaper of once-gold filigree, tarnished urns, rooms decorated in a hodgepodge of mid-century and baroque antiques. Kacey sees crushed velvet tufted sofas, mini-secretary desks in stained birch wood, all alongside Rococo end tables crowded with carved jade and scrimshaw statues of women, of horses, of fish. 

“Everything in your house is so beautiful,” Kacey cries as she chases after Lana, so breathless she feels like she's floating. 

Lana skids to a clumsy stop in a dark, dead-ended corner. “Not everything,” she pants, scanning the ceiling. “You be careful up here, and watch you step,” she says, reaching above her head and hopping a few times until she reaches the knotted string to the pull-down ladder. “The floor and roof are rotten in places. Can’t have you falling through,” she murmurs as she begins to ascend, and for the first time since Kacey stepped food inside this house, she feels a pang of fear. 

Not for herself, not necessarily. She is not afraid of Lana, and she is not afraid of the attic, but she _does_ feel a deep-seated spike of something unsettled inside her as she climbs the rickety stairs, eyes locked and blinking on the shape of Lana’s tucked in waist and wide soft hips in the clinging green velvet. It’s then, as the fear turns to sadness, that she realizes she’s afraid _for_ Lana. That she hates the idea of her all alone all the time in this massive echoey house, that she hates the knowledge that if _Lana_ fell through the rotted floorboards, no one would _know._ No one would hear her gasp or scream, because she’s always alone. 

Once Lana gingerly steps up into the attic she turns to help Kacey after her, hands cold on her forearms, gentle but firm. “It’s a mess up here,” she apologizes as she steadies them both. “But I know there’s a box of Christmas stuff somewhere.” 

Kacey looks around, blinking in the dust, shivering in the sudden chill. There’s furniture draped in white sheets, like an eerie landscape of snow-capped mountains. She thinks she’s imagining real drifts until the toe of her boot crunches down into ice. “Oh!” she says, looking up, flakes spiraling down to land in her hair. “You have a hole in your roof.” 

Lana looks up, sighing. “So I do. It’s an old thing, years ago kids used to throw rocks, one managed to crash through the shingles. It gets bigger every time the weather is bad.” 

Kacey holds a cupped palm out to catch the falling flakes, shivering in her pajamas. “I used to be one of those kids,” she says softly, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry. We used to—we used to think you were a witch, for no reason at all. Kids can be so _cruel_ sometimes.”

Lana moves aside some boxes with her toes. “You’re not cruel _now_ , and I think that’s what matters,” she offers. “Oh, goodness. Don’t _I_ look happy,” she adds then, chuckling low in her throat and crossing her arms across her chest. 

Kacey walks up beside her to see what she’s referring to, throat tight when she sees. There are two painted portraits, the frames cracked and damaged, the images themselves somewhat faded, as if they’ve lost their vibrancy from having been hidden away in darkness for so long. Still, she can make out Lana’s unsmiling face in each of them, washed out from the white of identical wedding dresses. The men, however, are different. Both tall, both old, both unremarkable and unkind looking, a heaviness about their eyes. “Your husbands?” she breathes, rubbing at the gooseflesh on her arms as a gust of wind creaks through the yawning hole in the ceiling. 

Lana nods. “Mr. John Grant and Mr. Victor Del Rey,” she says quietly, shaking her head. “I forget what they looked like, sometimes.” 

“Did you—did you love them?” Kacey manages to ask, although her voice comes out reedy from her choked throat, her teeth chattering the longer they stay up in this frigid attic amid the snow. She’s so _cold,_ even though what she’s wearing is so much warmer than Lana’s dress. Lana never seems to get cold, never seems to flush in the heat or in shame. She is as picturesque now in the snowstorm as she is in these photos, and so suddenly, so _wildly,_ Kacey wishes she could crack that perfect exterior. She wants to see Lana sweat, she wants to see her cheeks pinken, she wants to see her _gasp,_ her nippled draw tight in the cold and poke into the velvet of ver dress. She wants to know what she looks like with messy hair, and a torn bodice, her dress ripped and wet and clinging to her skin, and _oh,_ it’s such a terrible thing to think about, so she silences it. It always _ends_ this way, the time she spends with women, and this is why her friendships fade into dust. She cannot have them without turning them into something wretched. Without becoming a monster. 

“Of course I didn’t,” Lana says then, very quietly, lips pursed into a funny, sad, almost smile. She turns to Kacey, eyes dark with something like—-yearning. She inhales raggedly, then, and licks her lips, gaze darting down to Kacey’s mouth so fast she feels like she imagined it, that it was born from her _own_ powerful, debilitating, unspeakable _want_. “There’s snow in your hair, sweetheart,” she says, reaching out, brushing her pale fingers through the dark strands, sweet and slow. “Let’s find those decorations and get you back by the heater.” 

Kacey can hardly breathe let alone speak, so she just nods, hating how her blushing cheeks always, _always_ give her away. “I think I see something silver in the corner,” she murmurs, heart speeding up as Lana keeps gently, hypnotically finger-combing her hair. “It might—It might be the tree.” 

Lana blinks herself out of a sort of trance, the lovely, broken shape of her mouth trembling as she presses her lips together and shakes her head. She turns, and her body softens. “So it is,” she mumbles, smiling. “Look at you,” she says then, quietly and almost to herself as she picks her way across the treacherous floor to the glint like a magpie, flurries swirling around them both like they’re figures inside of a shaken snow-globe. “So pretty you make me get lost in my own attic.” 

And that makes Kacey’s heart up and _stop_ because Lana is _saying_ the sort of thing she _thinks,_ the sort of thing she feels can’t touch the light. The sort of thing she tries to bury, tries to drown, tries to hide. But here Lana del Rey is: touching her hair, studying her mouth, calling her pretty and what if—-what if she’s _wrong_? What if thinking about women that way _isn’t_ so strange, and _doesn’t_ make her a monster? Or what if they are _both_ strange? _Both_ monsters? 

Lana said she didn’t love her husbands, she said _of course not_ when Kacey asked her, like it was foolish to even suggest. And _that_ is the thing which plays on repeat in Kacey’s mind as they pick their way down the narrow attic stairs, tottering and unstable under the weight of the decoration box, the tree stacked so precariously on top they have to keep stopping to steady it, eyes streaming they’re laughing so hard, snow melting in their hair. _What if, what if?_ Kacey thinks, and she forces herself not to pull away in self-recrimination when she accidentally lays her hand atop Lana’s, palm flush to the back where she can see the bones, the blood beneath her skin. 

—-

Downstairs, they thaw. Lana drapes a heavy, knit blanket down onto the dusty banquet hall floor and they dig through the box together, pulling out tinsel, ornaments, festive votive holders, an antique nativity scene with a very morose looking Josef. “Mary is beautiful, though,” Lana observes, thumbing over the painted detail of her placid looking face before setting her gently beside the manger. “Have you found the baby Jesus?” 

“Not yet,” Kacey tells her, busy with carefully bending down and re-shaping each flattened or twisted wire branch of the tree so it looks full. “The tree’s looking a little better though.”

“Oh she looks lovely,” Lana purrs, sidling up behind Kacey and looping her arms around her waist playfully gaze at the tree. Kacey’s stomach drops, and she tilts back into the cool pressure of Lana’s body, thinking consciously and perhaps for the first time ever, _without_ guilt, _I want to kiss her so badly._ It’s strange, saying such a thing immediately berating herself for it, but she likes the way it feels. The thrill, the truth, the purity. _I want to kiss Lana Del Rey._ She shudders, and Lana lets her go, the ghost of her touch lingering like the residual burn upon having held something very very cold. “I’ll get the lights so we can start decorating her. Hopefully they still work… Jesus will show up eventually.” 

Some of the ornaments have shattered, and there’s bits of colored glass littering the bottom of the box so they’re careful as they dig around in it. The Crystals _Santa Claus is Coming to Town_ plays in the background and Lana hums along, fingers deft and elegant as she disentangles a string of lights, unwinding it and plugging it in. “Oh!” Kacey cries as they flicker for a moment before glowing steadily. “They _do_ work! Only the few out.”

“Perfect!” Lana explains, holding them up and looking like a crooner on the liner notes of a Christmas album, or maybe just some gorgeous model on a Christmas card, her dark hair glinting under the rainbow of colors. “Help me put them on the tree?” 

Together they dress the silver up, hands brushing over and over again, every moment quiet, loaded, tense, _delightful._ They hang the remaining ornaments, blue glass balls, pink icicles, a set of little felted reindeer in green and red that Kacey thinks are just the cutest things. At one point Lana clutches at Kacey’s hand and murmurs, “Oh _goodness,_ did you ever warm up after we were in the attic? Your hands are like ice, sweetheart,” she rubs Kacey’s palms between her own, and Kacey wants to say _what about_ you, _you’re_ always _freezing_ but she can’t say _anything,_ not with Lana touching her so much, pulling her close, exhaling hot and sweet onto her fingers to warm them up. “After we finish decorating, we should dance,” Lana says then, looking up at Kacey with dark, hooded eyes. “To warm up.” 

Kacey’s heart is thudding so hard in her chest she feels like Lana must be able to hear it, must _know_ how she’s affecting her, but maybe…maybe she wants that. Maybe she _wants_ Lana to know. “Do you know the twist?” she jokes, shaking her hips, lacing her fingers with Lana’s and grinning at her. 

Lana giggles, looking away with her lashes fluttering and perhaps, that’s as close to blushing as she ever gets. “I’m going to get us some wine,” she says then, squeezing Kacey’s hands once before letting her go. “You look for Jesus.” 

And she walks away she turns, and _winks_ over her shoulder, and Kacey might press her tingling palms together and pray to god for something unholy once she’s gone. Funnily enough, right after that hastily whispered prayer, ( _please, please god let me kiss Lana Del Rey)_ , she finds the baby Jesus at the bottom of the box, lots of shattered glass sticking to his swaddling clothes. She brushes him off against her PJs, and then tucks him into the manger, still praying. 

—-

Lana comes back with a bottle in each hand, uncorks both, and hands one to Kacey while she swigs from the other. “The snow is _still_ coming down so hard,” she observes after she swallows. “We’re stuck. Merry Christmas Eve, sorry I wasn’t able to get you where you needed to go.” 

Kacey waves her hand through the air dismissively. “I _had_ nowhere to go, not really. This is much better. And let it snow! we have plenty to do. Decorate. Dance. Drink,” she says, sniffing the rich, dark wine, mouth watering reflexively. 

“Being snowed in is _much_ better with friends,” Lana announces with a sigh, before her eyes widen. “Oh you found him!” she exclaims, pointing to the manger. “He’s so tiny.” 

“He’d fallen to the bottom of the box,” Kacey explains, taking a measured sip of wine, leaning into the way it burns down her throat. She feels reckless, daring. Ready to start drinking in the afternoon and dance into the night, ready to test the limits of the electric halo surrounding her and Lana, whatever it is that’s making her feel less and less alone. Less and less afraid. “We have a complete nativity now! Where should we set it up? There’s so many beautiful pieces of furniture in here,” Kacey says dreamily, gesturing loosely to the echoey banquet hall. 

“Let’s do it here, on the piano,” Lana says, sweeping over to the south end of the vast room, where there’s a covered grand piano. She whisks the cover off in a flurry of dust, then stuffs it into the now empty decoration box. “Do you play?” she asks then, drinking more wine as she strides back over to help Kacey with the nativity. “I don’t. My first husband bought it for me, thinking I’d learn like a good little wife, but it just sat here, I never touched it.” 

“I can’t either,” Kacey says regretfully, _wishing_ she had something to impress Lana with. “I play the guitar, and I can keep a beat on the tambourine, but never learned the piano.” 

“Oh, but you’re _musical._ I bet if you sat down and played around you could pick out a melody or _something,”_ Lana says, arranging Mary in front of the manger delicately. Then, she plucks Josef from the scene entirely. “I don’t like him, I don’t want him in our nativity.” 

“Fine by me,” Kacey says breathlessly, sitting down on the piano bench and shrugging, tapping her foot along to _Marshmallow World. “_ Put him back in the box for all I care.” 

Lana grins, and it’s a brilliant, bright, snow-white thing. “I like you,” she says, voice soft and warm, curling around the edges like burnt paper. Kacey thinks back to being a young girl, writing her secrets on post-its or slips of stationary before folding them up and ritualistically burning them. She blushes, flipping the key-cover up on the piano and sliding her fingers nervously along dusty ivory. 

“Well,” she says, pressing down middle C, since it’s all she knows. “I like you too.” 

They drink and they decorate, but so far, they have only danced _apart,_ instead of together, and even then only for moments at a time: Lana’s arms above her head so the velvet hem of her dress rides up creamy thighs during _Here Comes Santa Claus,_ and then a clumsy spin from Kacey, after she flips the record and starts it over for the hundredth time that day, marking the shift from afternoon to evening. 

The sun sets and the snow falls and and Kacey’s mouth is bittersweet with wine, her head cloudy and spinning and her lips tingling with how _desperately_ she wants a kiss. Finally, she can’t take it anymore. She offers a hand to Lana, stumbles as she pulls her to her feet. “You owe me that dance,” she says then, clinking their wine bottles together messily, steering Lana over to the piano so they can set them down on either side of the nativity, Mary and Jesus and two tapered bottles of blood red. “C’mon, I’ll teach you the twist.” 

“Alright,” Lana giggles, lips stained and eyes hazy, a faint metallic smell around her like she’s made from tinsel, as shining and lovely and silver as the tree. “And I can show you the waltz.” 

“You know how to _waltz?”_ Kacey gasps, boldly lacing their fingers and pulling Lana close, realizing all over again how she’s just a bit _shorter,_ enough she has to look up for their eyes to meet. They’re lovely eyes, Lana’s, dark and glittering at the same time they’re hazy beneath the shadow of her fluttering lashes. “So old fashioned,” she says, deciding to spin Lana, who dips awkwardly under her arm, tottering and weak with laughter. 

“Marriage…it’s not good for much, besides money. But you _do_ learn how to do lots of stuffy dances. Or at least, I did.” 

Kacey’s so dizzy, Lana is so _close,_ her sweet breath hot against her own lips. “Do you want to know why I _really_ left home?” she says quietly, overcome with a sudden bout of honestly, the hand she has on Lana’s soft, velvet waist fidgeting until it creeps to the dip of her lower back, pulling her even closer. She goes, unresisting and supple, a gasp forced out of her soft, smiling mouth and _oh,_ Lana is full of wishes, and confessions, and secrets. 

“You said—your family—that you weren’t getting along,” she breathes in a disjointed jumble. Their knees keep bumping, knees still moving under the guise of dance, spinning and spinning. Kacey is getting dizzy, but she doesn’t care. She wants Lana to _know._

 _“_ Yes. But the reason _why_ we weren’t getting along…it’s because my mom, she wants me to get married. Desperately.” 

“I remember,” Lana murmurs, eyes fixed onto Kacey’s mouth just at the comical kissing sound happens in The Ronettes' _I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus._ It’s the perfect moment to laugh, to dissipate the tension, but that’s not what happens. Lana licks her lips and says, “she’s wrong to be desperate over such a thing. Marriage— _men—_ they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.” 

“She _knows_ , she knows I won’t. Because she knows—about me. Even if I haven’t said it. Not to her, not even to myself. She just knows what I am, and it kills her, but…I’m not ashamed anymore,” Kacey says in a thrilled rush, hands all over Lana’s back, smoothing up the smooth crush of velvet until they touch skin. 

“What are you?” Lana asks then, pushing one gently, cold hand into the thick weight of Kacey’s hair. And Kacey can tell, that _she_ knows too. But unlike her mother, it doesn’t kill her…it brings her to life. Lana is flushing, a heat coming to her cheeks, and finally, finally Kacey is seeing her as the fog parts and something brilliant and broken shines through. 

“I’m—I’m never getting married,” Kacey breathes, as her head tilts down and she tastes Lana’s breath and it’s roses and blood and wine and ice and loneliness. “Because I love women.” 

And then, she’s kissing Lana del Rey, and the Ronettes are singing, and the snow is falling, and all her prayers are answered. 

—-

Time passes molasses slow, sticky and hot and sweet, one second—two, maybe, before Lana pulls away breathlessly. “Oh,” she says, and Kacey’s heart is leaping, soaring. She’s dizzy and she can’t keep up, Lana’s hands are cold and grounding on her flushed face. Their eyes lock, and she’s about to pitch forward again when Lana presses fingers into her sternum and says, “Honey—wait.” 

Kacey’s throat tightens, and she stumbles back reflexively, as if she’s been struck. “Oh—oh my goodness, I’m so _sorry,”_ she gasps, pam fluttering to clasp over her swollen mouth, the reality of what she’s just done sinking in like poison. “I should have—I _thought—”_

 _“_ You did nothing wrong,” Lana promises, even as the line of her mouth flattens and trembles, her eyes skirting the perimeter of Kacey’s neck and shoulder without _looking_ at her dead on. “ There are just—there are things you need to know—” but before she can finish Kacey is fleeing, her heart in her throat, choked with shame. She was so _sure_ they were the same but she can _tell_ she misjudged Lana and jumped to conclusions, racing ahead on a wind born from hope, that the wine and the snow and the isolation made her go mad and she leapt into the stars, let her desire take the reins. 

“I’m so sorry,” she chokes out, tearing away from Lana, face burning. She stumbles across the banquet hall floor, the vast room and all its new lights spinning as she starts up the stairs. “I’m so sorry.” 

“ _No—“_ Lana calla, following her. “Don’t leave, please.” 

But everything is too _much_ for Kacey to face in this moment, reality hitting her like an avalanche, freezing her heart, lighting fires at her heels as she runs, and runs. She thinks of her mother, her sister. How they’ve been _right_ all along about her, condemning her for her difference, her otherness. It feels suffocating now as she trips up the stairs, hating herself for crossing lines, for wanting things so badly she failed to _notice_ that Lana didn’t _return_ that want. She was simply acting as all women do, and _Kacey_ was the one who saw a distorted version of her own longing in the cracks. Tears sting her eyes and she briskly wipes them away, tearing through the hallway and heading for Lana’s room because she has no idea where else to go in this massive, gaping wound of a house.

She slams herself inside and locks the door, heart pounding, wine bitter on her tongue. She hears Lana’s measured footsteps outside just moments after she flips the latch, and she _knows_ she’s locking herself in _another girl’s room_ and that is so stupid and pathetic but she has nowhere else to go, so she just flings herself onto the bed, tears overflowing onto her cheeks as she hides in the metal and rose smell of Lana’s pillow.

There’s the insistent rap of knuckles against mahogany, and her chest clenches. “Please,” she says, trying to control her voice. “Just give me some time. I just. I just need to cry a bit, that’s all. I’ll come back in a minute good as new and I won’t—I won’t try anything else.” 

Lana audibly shifts before she settles outside, exhaling a long, sad breath. “I would very much like to kiss you, Kacey,” she says then, and that—that wasn’t what Lana was expecting. 

Silence falls like snow, settles upon them both and freezes the stretch of space on either side of the locked door. Then, Lana inhales sharply and breaks it. “But there are things you don’t know about me. Things I have to tell you.” 

Kacey rolls over, sits up and wipes her eyes with tremulous hands. “Tell me, then,” she manages to choke out, mascara tarry on the heels of her hands. “And be honest, I’m not fragile, Lana. I…I _know_ you’re not like me.” 

Lana laughs low and sad, then, and her voice sounds as if it’s coming from some indistinct place near the floor, like perhaps she’s slid down the wall, sunken there to the earth to confess on her knees. “No, I’m not like you. But I was, once.”

“You…what do you mean?” Kacey asks, spine curling, eyes dripping. “I meant—that you don’t love women like I do. The _way_ I do.” 

“No! No. I’ve always loved woman and always will. In every way. I just mean, that I’m not like you in _other_ ways. I was _alive_ , once. And then—the world. Men…they took that from me,” she says, very quietly, so hushed Kacey can hardly make it out. She stands and stumbles to the door to hear better, sinking to her haunches so she can press her ear to the wood. 

“You’re _still_ alive,” Kacey reminds her, tracing the moulding with longing fingers. “They haven’t taken—“ 

“I‘m a vampire,” Lana says then, with so much gravity and so much self-recrimination Kacey _knows_ she’s telling the truth, even if it is the sort of truth that feels impossible to accept. It’s _mad._ It’s so ridiculous she should laugh, but she can’t, because she _knows it’s true._ She lets it sit there in the air between them, lingering and quiet and heavy and agonizing, and eventually Lana lets out a small, shuddering sob and adds. “I don't expect you to understand. Or even believe me. ” 

And she shouldn’t believe her. She shouldn’t understand, and yet… Kacey can’t shake the feeling that this is Lana’s heart of hearts, the single pomegranate seed she’s been hiding in this whole huge house of shadows. This is the truth. 

Images come back to her unbidden in a miraculous, eerie parade: the cupboards full of unlabeled wine, how Lana always poured Kacey drinks from a separate bottle. The way her sheets smell metallic and sweet all at once. How pale she is, how cold her hands always are, the unchanged placidity of her face in her wedding portraits, the way her age has never, not for a _moment,_ made sense with Kacey’s memories of the Widow Del Rey and her mansion of silence and secrets. How she’s so strange, so lovely, and timelessly, flawlessly beautiful. How her mouth tasted of blood when she kissed her.

Kacey stands on shaky legs, and unlocks the door. 

She tries to open it but Lana is sitting on the floor just outside it, the green velvet of her dress riding up her creamy thighs as she scrambles to get out of the way and stand, tears on her porcelain-white cheeks. “You are?” Kacey asks, watching with wet, stinging eyes as Lana stands up clumsily and smoothes her palms over her stomach, lips plump and pouting and still, _still_ so inviting. “A vampire?” she whispers, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

“Yes,” Lana says, voice tight with resignation as she looks up with mournful, sorry eyes. “And I’d _never_ hurt you, so you don’t need to worry about that. It’s not—I manage, to get by. I don’t hurt women.” 

That sends a chill down Kacey’s spin, in all that it says and does not say. She takes a cautious step closer. “The bottles in the kitchen…” 

“I get by,” she repeats as she nods, gaze fixed on the floor, lashes black half-moon shapes against her cheeks, clotted with tears. “And I—I do what I need to feed myself but I don’t go looking for trouble. I usually keep to myself, but then…” her breath catches, and she laughs brokenly, quietly. “You showed up on my doorstep and you were _so beautiful_ and trusting and not afraid of me, not one bit, Kacey. And you let me take care of you and that felt so goddamned _good_ I got carried away.” 

“Carried away how?” Kacey asks, reaching out with tremulous fingers and laying them ever so gently on the inside of Lana’s wrist, where no pulse flutters. She’s not sure how she missed that, how she didn’t _notice_ the ways in which Lana is so oddly, perfectly _still._

Lana looks up, eyes wet and heavy and brimming with unshed tears as she smiles a watery smile. “Carried away looking at you, talking to you. Eating real fool with you. Falling for you. Pretending I could be with you. 

Her voice gets softer and softer with each word, trembling until it’s nothing but a breathy whisper at the end, and Kacey cannot take it anymore. Something hot and reckless builds in her gut and her heart is flinging itself up into her throat and she’s pulling Lana in with fists of crushed velvet and telling her fiercely, “You can be with me. You can,” and then, they’re kissing again, a bloom of iron and heat on Kacey’s tongue like she’s just licked into a fresh scrape. Kacey cups Lana’s tear-sticky face between her palms and holds her fast, kisses her and kisses her until she feels Lana shudder and relent, and let her in. 

They stumble there in the doorway together, poised on the edge of a threshold, pushing and pulling against each other like the tide against the shore. “Honey,” Lana says sweetly as they part in a messy gale of breath. “You’re—you’re not afraid?” 

Kacey laughs, hands shaking as she experimentally combs her fingers through Lana’s smooth, straight hair. “Oh, I’m terrified. But not _of_ you—not that you’ll bite me or suck my blood or anything. More that. I’ve never done _anything,_ really, with another girl,” she admits, teeth nearly chattering with the adrenaline coursing through her body. “But I _want_ to. I want to so badly.” 

Lana licks her lips, pressing her cheek into Kacey’s palm and tilting her head back to inhale shakily. “I can show you,” she murmurs. “I can show you everything.” 

And then, she's lacing their fingers, she’s twirling out of Kacey’s arms, and striding into her room. 

Kacey trembles, and follows. 

—-

It’s not how she imagined it would be, when she allowed herself to imagine such things, in the very early mornings when she’d awake half-frozen in her apartment in the village and wish there was a woman beside her, warm skin she could smooth her palms up, perfumed hair where she could bury her face and inhale. Those mornings, she’d feel sick, knowing full well it would never _be_ so soft or tender or _easy,_ having a woman in her bed. It would be terrifying, a shameful sin committed in shadows, filthy and crass. 

But is _is_ soft and tender and easy. It’s even _softer_ and more tender and _easier_ than she dreamed. Lana lays her down, brushes her hair from her eyes, unbuttons her PJ top and maps out every new strip of exposed skin with lingering, breathy kisses. She strokes her hair, she flutters her lashes against the hollow of her throat, she murmurs over and over again how _gorgeous_ she thinks Kacey is, how she could hardly look at her that first night when her dress was soaked through, how she thought she was an angel. Kacey’s stomach drops and the junction of her thighs burn and before she even realizes it or has time to feel guilty about it, her hips are reflexively rolling. 

Lana gasps, mouth parted and panting as she settles between Kacey’s legs, pushing her apart gently, spreading her like the petals of a rose so they can shift together. Again, it feels like the tide. A rhythmic ebb and flow, as steady and natural as breath, as the moon pulling the sea to and fro. At some point, Lana thumbs over Kacey’s cheek bone and says, “You’re crying, sweetheart.” 

“It just. It feels so good. You feel so good,” Kacey gasps, hands spread wide and searching over the deep curve of Lana’s back. “I didn’t know it could be like this.” 

Lana’s laughter comes out in a delicate huff. “And we haven’t even gotten started yet, not really,” she murmurs, mouth suddenly open and wet on Kacey’s throat. “Can I see you? All of you?” she asks, questioningly pushing Kacey’s shirt off her shoulder, exposing bare skin to the night. “And would you like to see me?” she asks coyly then, reaching around and moving Kacey’s hand to the zipper of her dress. 

“Please,” Kacey breathes, rocking her hips up against Lana’s body, seeking heat, pressure, _anything.”_

“Undress me,” Lana whispers, grinding down, nudging an unexpected moan out of Kacey’s swollen lips. “And then I’ll undress you.” 

It feels ritual, tugging the zipper down tooth by tooth. Pale skin made real and magic in the moonlight, Lana’s body so unbelievably soft Kacey feels like she’s dreaming as she touches her under the velvet for the first time, helping her peel out of the dress. which she pulls over her head in a dark bunch, wrecking what little order she had left to her hair. It floats down around her white shoulders now, not quite long enough to cover her breasts, the heft of them rising and falling in time with her breath, her nipples drawn tight and pink in the cold. Kacey’s mouth waters, and her heart races. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmurs, wanting _so_ badly to touch that her hands rise beyond her will. 

Lana doesn’t mind, arching her back and pressing herself into Kacey’s hands, gasping as she thumbs instinctually over her nipples. “You, now,” she whimpers, mouth all over Kacey’s sternum and throat, spit-slick and hungry. “Please. I want your skin.” 

And Kacey should be terrified. She can feel the prick of Lana’s incisors against her pulse, she can taste the new-penny bite on her tongue from their kisses, the hint of copper, and sweetness of wine, but—she doesn’t care. She cannot care. _You could turn me right now, Lana Del Rey, and I’d spend eternity with you in this house, where I once threw a rock and tore through the shingles of the roof. Where I once shuddered at the thought of you, and ran from the ghost of you. I’d stay and I’d stay and I’d stay._

She struggles out of her PJs and bra, clumsy and yearning, so far past the point of being afraid of _any_ of this. Lana moans before she drops her head to kiss Kacey’s breasts, and then she’s squeezing them, mouthing over them them, rolling the nipples between her fingers before affixing her soft mouth there to suck in desperate, tender pulses. 

It feels incomprehensibly good. Raw and vulnerable and sweet and safe somehow all at the same brilliant time: the heat of Lana’s mouth, the weight of her body, the shift and tickle of her hair as it dances over Kacey’s heaving stomach. Every moment and touch and sensation part of a huge, building wave. “Please touch me,” Kacey begs, hands wandering all over Lana’s back, down her spine, so many miles of maddening softness. “ _Please,_ touch me—touch me there.” 

“There?” Lana whispers against the shell of Kacey’s ear, hand moving to cup her firmly but gently through her PJ pants. 

Kacey cries out, tangling her hand in Lana’s hair so she can pull her back to look at her, find her own reflection in the blown-wide black of Lana’s all-pupil eyes, hazy and half-lidded with desire. “I’m not scared,” she promises, spreading her thighs wider, trembling all over as Lana pushes her hand under the waistband to touch unobstructed. Oh, honey,” she moans, fingers gentle, careful, electric as they push liquid-easy through Kacey’s slick folds. “You feel like heaven.” 

“Your teeth,” Kacey murmurs then, rocking hungrily into Lana’s hand, riding it in time with her own feverish breath. She reaches up, gently rubs over Lana’s mouth. “I can see—your fangs.” 

Lana’s mouth falls open, so Kacey can press her thumb into the sharp point of Lana’s lengthened incisor, hard enough it stings but doesn’t draw blood. “You’re beautiful. They’re beautiful.” 

Kacey gasps as Lana withdraws her hand so she can tug at Kacey’s pants, drag them down her hips. “I want to see,” she murmurs then. “Want to see you all wet.” That sends a pang of nearly painful arousal deep into Kacey’s gut. The knowledge Lana wants to see her. See how much she’s flooded, how much she wants this, how desperate she is to be touched. She thinks of that solitary pinprick against her thumb and kicks her way out of her pants to part her thighs, astounded that something so vulnerable could feel so _good,_ so healing. A woman pushing her legs apart and staring at her. A woman’s eyes wide with longing, sparkling with awe-stricken tears. A woman licking her lips, and then, running her tongue over the two shining points of her fangs. 

“You can bite me,” Kacey says then, in a mad, reckless rush of emotion. Her hips roll, and she can feel herself pulsing with hunger. “If you want to. You can bite me.” 

Lana looks at her for a moment, eyes stricken and flashing before they soften, and her smile wavers into something lush and full and warm. “Oh honey. You’re such a sweet, perfect girl…ready to give me everything.” She rubs her fingers into Kacey, over the place where she’s most swollen and hard and it makes her jump, her legs spasm it feels so good. “I’m not going to bite you though, babygirl. Not tonight. But I _would_ like to taste you, if that’s ok.” 

Kacey isn’t even sure what she means, at first, but she wants everything Lana is willing to offer her right now, so she chokes out a breathless _please_ as Lana moves lower, and lower, and there’s a gentle exhalation on the upper inner crease of her thigh before she’s capsizing into the sea, everything so _wet,_ wetter than wet, the whole of the ocean right here, passed from Lana’s sharp lovely mouth to the junction between her thighs like kisses are waves. 

She moans, and sobs, and clenches her fists into the sheets that smell like wine and blood and roses to let herself be tossed amid the surf like a single feather lost in a storm. 

—-

Time passes in messy, half-melted fragments. Hands lazily tracing skin, Lana’s lips tasting like salt and spice when they kiss. Kacey lets Lana rub herself on her thigh, but before she finishes she feels like she’ll _die_ if she doesn’t get to touch so she pushes her hands between her own skin and the maddening heat and slick of Lana’s, and feels a pulse, a shudder, an earthquake. Lana tilts her head, arches her back, and Kacey watches with the same sort of awe she feels when she sees the full moon in all its strange, otherworld’s glory. 

Even when it’s over, it doesn’t feel _over._ It lingers like perfume. They tremble in seismic waves and there's sweat, and nail marks like dry river beds, and laughter every time Kacey’s long black hair ends up in Lana’s smiling mouth, as they kiss and kiss and tangle and roll around like a pillow fight without the pillows. It’s _heaven_ and Kacey doesn’t care about all the ways it smells like blood, or all the ways in which she should be afraid. She’s not afraid. 

They eventually wind down, and Kacey lies on her back, gently petting Lana’s back as she curls up against her, head nestled into her chest. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” she murmurs, lips soft against Kacey’s pulse, which is still a hectic, speeding thing. 

Kacey blinks heavy eyes, and threads her hand into the back of Lana’s hair. “It’s not Christmas yet, is it?” 

Lana lazily points to a gold, baroque style clock on the bedside. “It’s after midnight.” 

“My word!” Kacey gasps, peering blearily at the numbers. She shouldn’t be surprised, after all it _does_ feel like an unreasonable amount of time has passed. Hours, years, millennia, all in the blink of an eye, in so many kisses and shared breaths. “So, it is Christmas then.”

Lana smiles, and traces a teasing line down Kacey’s sternum between her breasts. “Thank you for being my Christmas present,” she purrs, fingers dancing back up to gently stroke the tiny gold crucifix Kacey has worn habitually for so long she forgot it was there. 

“Oh! That doesn’t burn you?” she asks, hand coming to rest on Lana’s wrist as if checking her for blisters. “I thought vampires couldn’t touch crucifixes.” 

Lana laughs, tinkling and breathless, pressing her breasts into Kacey’s side as she shifts closer in a tangle of sheets. “No,” she says. “ I can touch crosses…bibles too. Seems god doesn’t have much an opinion about vampires. AndI love a good garlic puttanesca with my wine, and I burn easily, in the sun, but it won’t kill me. Most of the things you hear about us aren’t true.”

“Really? What is true?” 

Lana rolls onto her back, gazing at the ceiling. “The only real bits are that we live forever, and need blood to survive” She frowns then, after saying it, lips parted around a labored sigh. “And those things…they make for a pretty lonely existence.” 

“Well, I’m here now,” Kacey says gently, turning to kiss Lana. 

And outside, the blizzard quiets, and the snow turns to flurries of delicate white like powdered sugar. They drift off together in the new silence, Lana’s skin so white it’s nearly silver in the moonlight, and Kacey occasionally blinking awake to admire it, and touch her dark hair to make sure she’s still there.Thankfully, she is. As Kacey falls back into the cradle of sleep, her mind plays _There’s No Place Like Home For The Holidays,_ and for the first time in her life, that song makes her happy. 

She dreams of twin punctures in her neck, a silver brush in her hair, Lana’s thighs around her throat, her fingers in her mouth, of needing blood, and living forever, and how it doesn’t _have_ to be lonely. Not every time. 

—-


End file.
